ZEISS Milvus 1.4/25 mm and ZEISS Otus 1.4/28 mm Lenses

As mentioned on my Gear page, I almost exclusively use ZEISS manual focus prime lenses. I’m sold on their consistent color, sharpness, micro-contrast, and precise manual focusing ability. But before buying any new lens, I’ve gotten in the habit of renting one from LensRentals www.lensrentals.com. I can’t recommend the practice of renting before buying, and of renting from LensRentals highly enough.

For a recent trip to the Smokies, I rented a ZEISS Otus 28mm f/1.4 Apo Planar T* lens. I already own, and love, the ZEISS Otus 55mm and Otus 85mm (my favorite) lenses, and figured I’d love the 28mm Otus, too. Sure enough, it was the most amazing wide angle lens I’ve ever used. It was bitingly sharp corner-to-corner, with negligible aberrations or distortion. Even stars in the corners of night sky shots showed almost no coma. Silky smooth, beautiful, and incredible. I hated to return it, but still was not sure that I would find the 28mm focal length particularly useful—especially considering the price and the giant size of the lens.

With ZEISS’s recent announcement of the new Milvus 25mm f/1.4 lens, I decided to wait to try it before deciding on a new wide angle lens. I already own the ZEISS 25mm f/2 Distagon T* lens, which I regularly use for my engineering work. It’s wonderfully small and light, and perfect for my work kit. It’s quite sharp across much of the image, yet is just a little soft around the very edges and corners.The 28mm Otus proved that a wide angle lens can be sharp from corner-to-corner, with negligible distortion. But I wished it was just a little wider.

Before my return trip to the Smokies a couple weeks later, I noticed that LensRentals had the brand new 25mm f/1.4 Milvus lens available to rent. After nine days of shooting with it, all I can say is it was magnificent. It’s near-Otus quality for about half the price, in a smaller package with a smaller filter size, and less weight—plus it has weather sealing the Otus lenses lack. I absolutely loved it. I was only a little sad to send it back, though, because I put my name on the list at B&H to buy my own copy once they become available.

On my way home from the Smokies, I stopped by a long-abandoned motel near the GA/TN state line. I then parked my Toyota 4Runner TRD Pro at one end of the motel, and made the image above with the rented ZEISS Milvus 25mm f/1.4 lens on my Nikon D850.Abandoned motel with 4Runner. (ZEISS Milvus 25mm f/1.4 on Nikon D850.)It’s a single frame, with some of the top, a little of the bottom, and a tiny sliver of the right side cropped off. There was no cropping of the left side. Because the lens was so new, there was no lens profile available in Adobe Camera Raw, so what you’re seeing is how sharp and distortion-free this lens is right out of the box. Neither the bricks at the left nor my 4Runner at the right are distorted.

Images from my field testing were all incredibly sharp edge-to-edge and corner-to-corner. The lens was easy to focus and a joy to use. Can’t wait to get my copy.